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Summary
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in A Handful of Dust, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Communication Breakdown and the Loss of Meaning
Religion, Morality, and Tradition
Chance and Fate
Civilization vs. Barbarism
Summary
Analysis
In 1930s London, interior decorator Mrs. Beaver stands in front of an actively burning house and discusses with her son the profit to be made from redecorating it. Her son, John Beaver, is an unemployed 25-year-old Oxford graduate who lives at home with his mother, a widow. The two gossip together, and Mrs. Beaver encourages John’s social climbing and freeloading efforts. John usually sits at home by the telephone, waiting for an invite to a free meal. These invitations are often last-minute, as his friends ask him to fill in for people who dropped out at the 11th hour.
The opening scene displays Mrs. Beaver’s ruthless profit-seeking instinct, seeing personal financial opportunity in the tragedies of others—foreshadowing the very last scene of the novel. Mrs. Beaver’s son shares his mother’s exclusive interest in self-advancement, but he lacks her shrewd determination and is more of a free-floating parasite. The name “Beaver” captures both the mother’s industriousness and the son’s absurdity.
Themes
John Beaver has received a passing and probably insincere invite from Tony Last to spend the weekend at Hetton, his country estate. Mrs. Beaver advises him to hold Tony to his promise, insisting that Beaver send the Lasts a telegram instead of calling them, since this will make it harder for them to come up with an excuse to go back on the invitation. She also explains that Tony’s wife is Brenda, a once highly desired girl whom she feels is wasted on the boring Tony. Mrs. Beaver, for her part, always thought Brenda should have ended up with someone like Jock Grant-Menzies.
John Beaver’s practice here reveals what must be his standard operating procedure—squeezing an invite out of someone in passing and then unexpectedly following up on it. Mrs. Beaver’s cynical advice, and her infinite supply of pertinent gossip, bolster her dim son’s social climbing career. This scene also highlights the totality of her influence on John in the absence of his deceased father.
Themes
While waiting by the phone in the hopes of receiving a lunch invite, John Beaver is delighted to finally get a call. It’s from Mrs. Tipping, who Beaver knows is having a luncheon party that day. Expecting to receive a last-minute invite, he eagerly answers—but Mrs. Tipping only asks if he knows how she could get in touch with Jock Grant-Menzies, to whom Beaver introduced her the previous night. Beaver suggests that she try reaching Jock at a gentleman’s club called Brat’s. Mrs. Tipping thanks him and quickly ends the call.
The ironic twist in this phone call illustrates Beaver’s sad dependence on others—if he could find employment, he would not need to rely on others for food, and he would also probably earn more respect from the social circle on whom he constantly freeloads. His mother acts as a modest safety net, but Beaver’s laziness renders him, in practice, a kind of bourgeois panhandler.
Themes
John Beaver heads to the pseudo-elegant social club Brat’s, which was established just after World War I by young men who wanted a place to socialize without being judged by the older generations. Now, though, these men have themselves become middle-aged, and they look down on Beaver’s generation, which is made up of young men who have never been to war and don’t seem manly or gentlemanly. In particular, Beaver isn’t very popular at the club, though the older men do accept people like Jock Grant-Menzies.
The social dynamics at Brat’s club provide a glimpse of the confusion and frayed social fabric of England between the wars. The normal progression of generations has been interrupted by WWI, Europe’s first major conflict in a century, which left the veterans’ generation alienated from those both older and younger. The likeable Jock can bridge this divide, while Beaver cannot.
Themes
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At Brat’s, John Beaver sits off to the side instead of going up to the bar. Eventually, Jock Grant-Menzies comes over and buys him a drink. The two men talk about Mrs. Tipping, and Jock says he has no interest in going to her luncheon party—he doesn’t like social engagements of that kind. Preparing for his trip to Brenda and Tony Last’s country estate, Beaver asks Jock about the couple, and Jock tells him that Tony Last is an enviably happy man.
Jock demonstrates why people like him in his easygoing display of warmth towards the unliked Beaver. His lack of interest in the luncheon that Beaver was desperate to join likewise indicates both a firmer social standing and a greater self-assurance than Beaver possesses. Jock’s “enviably” comment is foreboding, considering Mrs. Beaver’s remark about boring Tony and beautiful Brenda.
Themes
As John Beaver and Jock chat, a server comes over and informs Beaver that he has an unpaid tab from the previous month, but Beaver quickly dismisses him, acting as if paying it simply slipped his mind. Soon enough, Beaver stands to leave, flippantly assuming Jock probably doesn’t want another drink—but Jock says he actually does want another round. Beaver quickly places the order, and when the server asks if he should put the round on his tab, Beaver says yes. Later, after Beaver has left, Jock tells some other club members that he made Beaver pay for a drink. When the other members note that Beaver must have hated this, Jock says, “He nearly died of it.”
Beaver manages to get by while being perennially broke by taking advantage of gentlemanly customs like buying your mate a drink and charging things to a long-running tab. When confronted with his fiscal shortcomings, he awkwardly tries to play them off. Jock was benevolent in going over to join Beaver, but he couldn’t resist making him squirm by obliging Beaver to buy him a drink in return, and sharing a laugh about it afterward with the other club members.
Themes
After leaving Jock, John Beaver goes downstairs and calls home to see if there are any messages. He learns that Mrs. Tipping called to invite him to her luncheon party. Beaver asks his mother’s staff to send word that he’s on his way and will be a little late.
Beaver here displays his parasitic nature, as he all too eagerly leaps on the spot at the luncheon that Jock, who sees this kind of gathering as beneath his interest, declined.
Themes
